a lesson learned, as this should have been scheduled in-house initially to avoid
this,” Mr. Williams says.

;e engineering design entailed building six 50-foot-wide (15-meter-wide) rows
of reef out of concrete along the bay ;oor, each row stretching 250 feet (76 meters)
in length. In May 2013, the design was approved. In September, Mr. Williams
awarded the building work to RLB Contracting, in nearby Port Lavaca, whose bid
came within 25 percent of the government estimate, allowing construction of all
six rows by March 2014. ;is would put the completion of the USACE project—
and thus the entire program—just three
months behind the completion of the
GLO project.

TAKING SHAPE

From mid-December 2013 to January
2014, RLB Contracting stockpiled 3,000
tons ( 2,722 metric tons) of concrete,
broke it into pieces—none bigger than
36 inches (91 centimeters) in diameter—and cleaned them to remove all
metals and potential contaminants. On
15 February 2014, the team members
began shipping the concrete on barges
to the work site. Once there, they used
an excavator bucket to lift the rock
and drop it onto the bay bottom, just
eight feet ( 2. 4 meters) below the water’s
surface. ;ey piled the massive rows,
Based on the engineering plan, the project team had determined that about
two feet (0.6 meters) of the wall would settle into the bay ;oor. ;at would then
leave about ;ve feet ( 1. 5 meters) of clearance between the tops of the walls and
the water’s surface, enough room for the boats above.

;en the team hit another delay—but this time, not a man-made one. In
March, a sudden and intense fog slowed work to a virtual standstill.

“;e fog came out of nowhere for this particular stretch of time,” Mr. Wil-liams recalls. “We lost about three weeks as a result.”Once again, careful planning came to the rescue: Mr. Williams had accountedfor potential weather delays, granting the contractor 26 non-working daysdue to poor weather. RLB needed to use only 20. ;e non-working days thusincurred no additional costs.

;e six rows were completed on 12 April 2014, compared to the original goal
of late 2011 or early 2012.

“;ere’s a lot involved even in the smallest of projects. You think, ‘Six rowsof rock in the water, big deal,’” Mr. Williams says with a laugh. “But what yousee is not even close to a representation of what you had to go through to getto the ribbon cutting.”;e Nature Conservancy intends to launch two similar reef-reconstructionprojects along the Texas coast within the next two years. By then, Half MoonReef should be showing signs of sustainability.

“Hopefully this will be a center of highly productive reefs and we’ll see reefs
establishing themselves where we didn’t build them,” Mr. Herron says. “Maybe
we’ll even bring it back to 400 acres someday.” PM

“There’s a lot involvedeven in the smallestof projects. You think,‘Six rows of rock inthe water, big deal.’But what you see isnot even close to arepresentation ofwhat you had to gothrough to get to theribbon cutting.”—Byron D. Williams, PMPByron D. Williams, PMP, third from left, saysthe experience taught him important projectmanagement lessons.